Descartes's Eudaimonism: The Virtuously Content Life

Abstract

This paper examines René Descartes's engagement with the ethical tradition of eudaimonism, which considers happiness or flourishing ( eudaimonia ) the highest good. On the one hand, Descartes can be read as an eudaimonist because he is in rich dialogue with certain ancient thinkers (e.g., Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus and the Stoics) and shares with them an ethical concern with living a happy life. On the other hand, because Descartes is understood as rejecting perfectionism or the status of happiness as the supreme good, there is reason to doubt this reading. I, however, will argue that Descartes is indeed an eudaimonist because he shares with proponents of this ancient ethical tradition a fundamental commitment to a good that is (a) partly objectively grounded in facts about human nature; (b) partly subjectively grounded in the beliefs/feelings of a subject; (c) structurally stable; and (d) only intrinsically valuable. Through these formal features we gain greater perspective on Descartes's dialogue with ancient eudaimonists (as an advocate of a prior account or an original thinker) and contemporaries such as Benedict de Spinoza, G.W. Leibniz and Thomas Hobbes concerning the nature and relationship between the will and intellect, and the mind and body, in living a good life.